aterovis_bleedinghearts.pm6 (32 page)

Now you know who is going to kill you.”

“You’re going to kill your own brother?”

“He’s not really my brother, you know?” he looked down at the still-unconscious Jake. “Not my whole brother anyway. I hate him. I found out the truth about him a few years ago. I overheard my parents fighting.

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They do that a lot, you know. Usually about Jake. Never about what they should have been fighting about.”

I tried to maneuver myself so that I could get a clear shot at him. He didn’t seem to notice, he was so caught up in his narrative.

“Everyone thinks we’re such a perfect family. They don’t know the real story, what goes on behind closed doors. Dad’s a deacon at church, Mom volunteers at every church function. No one knows how Dad beats the shit out of us every time we sin. No one knows how my father is an adulterer. No one knows that Jake here is the fruit of his adultery. No one knows how my father has raped Gilly so many times she doesn’t even fight it anymore. It has to stop. They all have to be punished. God has said they must die.”

In my horror, I had almost forgotten what was happening, but his last words snapped me out of the trance I had fallen into. “Todd,” I said softly, “you’re right, they need to be punished, but let the law handle it. You don’t have to be the one. The killing has to stop. This has to stop.”

“Enough!” Todd screamed, “The killing will stop. It will stop when all the sinners have been punished for their wickedness. I have been anointed to carry out the punishment.” And with that he grabbed Jake by the hair, yanked his head back, and quickly raised the knife.

“No!” I screamed. I pulled the gun out, aimed, and fired in one smooth motion. Everything went into slow motion, each detail permanently engraved into my memory. The sound of the gunshot was deafening. The bullet struck Todd just as he brought the knife down, but the impact slammed him backwards, causing the knife to rip into Jake’s shoulder instead of the tender flesh of his exposed neck. I fired a second shot as I heard the sound of shattering glass from behind me. During the exchange with Todd, I had almost forgotten Asher 275

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was behind me. Todd’s body jerked as the second bullet ripped through his chest. He stared at me with a look of total disbelief, his mouth open as if screaming but no sound was coming out. I raised the gun slightly and fired off a third shot, right between his eyes. And then it was over. Todd was lying dead on the floor in a growing pool of blood, and my ears were still ringing from the shots. It had all happened in less time than it takes to tell it, and now that it was done, I seemed unable to take it all in. I had just killed another human being...and enjoyed it. I felt an immense sense of satisfaction that I had removed this vile person from this world. And that scared me. I stood there with the gun still in front of me for an immeasurable amount of time. It may have been seconds, it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Slowly I became aware of a crackling sound from behind me and a steadily increasing heat at my back. I dropped the gun and turned slowly around.

Asher lay on his side in the hall. The oil lamp that he’d been holding had shattered and the oil had caught fire. The flames were only a few inches from Asher’s face.

“Asher!” I screamed as I leaped over the flames. I dragged him away from the fire and shook him to wake him up. His eyes fluttered open and he focused on my face. “There’s a fire,” I said urgently. “We have to get Jake out.” I pulled him roughly to his feet. Once I was sure he was steady, I jumped the flames, which were already a little higher, and rushed to Jake’s side. I fumbled with the knots for several precious minutes before Asher appeared at my side, holding the bloody knife in his hands.

“Cut them,” he said softly.

I looked up at him, then grabbed the knife and quickly sawed through the thick ropes. Jake was slippery with blood from his shoulder wound, and by the time the 276

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two of us got him out of the chair and propped between us the flames had completely engulfed the doorway.

“How’re we going to get out?” Asher said, a note of panic creeping into his voice.

“The window,” I suggested. We dragged Jake to the window and I looked out. There was no way; we were on the second floor and there was nothing below us but a concrete driveway.

“We can’t!” Asher wailed. The smoke was growing steadily thicker and it was becoming harder to breathe.

“Break the window. I need air,” Asher said, before bursting into a fit of coughing. I lowered Jake to the floor where the air was a little clearer, then grabbed the chair he had been in and smashed the window outward. Cool air rushed in, allowing us a few precious breaths. Then, with a deafening whoosh, the fire behind us suddenly burst into a raging inferno fed by this new source of oxygen. Asher screamed and shielded his face as a blast of superheated air washed over us. We both dropped to the floor next to Jake.

For a minute all I could think about was the pain.

Slowly my mind began to function again. So we die anyway, I thought. Please, God, don’t let us die.

“Killian, do you hear something?” Asher asked me, interrupting my prayer.

I listened intently and thought that maybe, just maybe, I heard a voice calling over the roar of the fire.

“Is there someone there?” I screamed.

“Killian?” There was definitely someone there.

“Please, help us!” I called back, “It’s me, Asher, and Jake. We can’t get through the fire.”

“Is the bed on fire?”

I looked over at the bed. It was against the same wall we were and the flames hadn’t yet reached it.

“No.”

“Get the comforter and wrap it around yourselves, 277

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then run through the fire as quickly as you can.”

“Are you sure?”

There was a pause. “There’s no other choice.”

Asher already had pulled the heavy quilt off and crawled back to me and Jake. We got into crouching position and draped Jake between our shoulders. Then we draped the quilt over our head and wrapped the loose ends tightly around our bodies. The heat was almost unbearable by now, and the light from the fire even penetrated through the think material of the quilt so that I could see Asher’s face quite clearly.

“Asher, I love you,” I sobbed, “If we don’t live...”

“We will,” he cried.

“But if we don’t, I want you to know that I’ll always love you and I’ll see you in heaven.”

“I love you too, Killian. Always and forever.”

“Let’s go!” I screamed.

I squeezed my eyes shut and ran as fast as I could in the direction of the door. It was like running in a three-legged race with dead weight between us. The heat was like nothing I had ever felt before. Every nerve in my body seemed to be screaming in agony, and every breath seared my lungs and throat. I stumbled on the quilt as it unwound from around us, and would have fallen, but I crashed into what I could only assume was the door frame with a bone-crunching thud, the full weight of Jake’s body adding to the impact. I ricocheted off and the momentum actually carried us through the door and into the hall.

“This way!” someone screamed from off to our right.

We ran blindly in that direction and didn’t stop until we ran into something soft.

“Oof!” our obstacle grunted from the impact. We went down in a tangle of smoldering quilt, arms and legs; there seemed to be too many for the number of people present. When the quilt was ripped off of us and I saw 278

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our rescuers, I understood why...there were two of them: Judy...and Dash.

“Hurry!” Judy screamed, “We need to get out of here quickly. That fire is spreading faster than a black snake on a hot road. This old house is gonna go up like dry tinder.”

“Jake is unconscious,” I gasped, greedily gulping the relatively cool air. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Then we’ll have to carry him. Dashel and Asher, get his legs. Killian, you and I will take his arms. Hurry!”

We lifted Jake and careened down the stairs as quickly as we could without falling. We took a short breather at the bottom of the stairs while Judy opened the front door.

“You go,” I said suddenly, “I’m calling 911.” I was gone before anyone had a chance to say anything. I took off down the dark hallway and ran into the kitchen door at full speed, bouncing off of it like a rubber ball. The door had only given about an inch before it had hit something. I placed my full weight against it and pain shot down my arm where I’d hit the doorframe earlier, but I did manage to shove the door and its burden a few more inches. It was just enough room for me to squeeze in. I popped through and promptly fell on top of whatever was blocking the door. It didn’t take long to realize that it was a person, and from the way it felt...a very dead person.

I didn’t even have to time for that to fully register before the second story windows over the kitchen exploded from the heat. The flames leapt out the window, illuminating the kitchen with their ghastly orange glow.

I instinctively ducked my head to shield my face and found myself staring into Gilly’s wide, vacant eyes. For a moment it wasn’t Gilly’s face I was seeing, but another young person with the same type of wound.

“I’m so sorry, Seth,” I sobbed, “I’m sorry I didn’t get 279

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there sooner...didn’t stop Todd sooner. Oh God, Seth, please...”

Another loud crash from upstairs made me look up, and when I looked back down again Seth was gone and Gilly lay in his place. I clawed my way up the counter and grabbed the phone. Dead! Just like Seth. Just like Zack. Just like Gilly. Just like Todd. So much death.

Suddenly it was too much; it was more than I could handle, and huge wracking sobs washed over me as I slid to the floor, wedged between Gilly’s lifeless body and the cabinet. Just then the door swung open with a thwack as it slammed into Gilly.

“Killian? Are you in there?” It was Dash.

“Yes,” I sobbed.

“We have to get out. The whole second floor is on fire. Mom already called 911 from the car phone. Come on!”

“I...I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Why can’t I get the door open?”

“It’s Gilly.”

“She’s in there?”

“Yes.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s dead.”

There was a pause, and then, “There’s nothing we can do, then. We need to get out of here, now!” He squeezed his way through the door and looked down at Gilly. “Oh my God!” He gasped when he saw her.

He forced himself to look away, then reached down and yanked me roughly to my feet. Still holding my hand, he half-dragged me through the door and into the hallway. We hadn’t gone more than two feet before yet another huge crash boomed above our heads. It was followed by an ominous creaking of wooden beams that stopped us dead in our tracks just seconds before a large section of the ceiling crashed down right in front of us, 280

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showering us with sparks and burning debris.

“Is there a back door?” Dash screamed.

I yanked him back towards the kitchen and we raced to the back door. We burst into the cool air of the backyard.

“They’re in front, by your car.” Dash panted.

We ran around the corner of the house and were about halfway across the front yard when an enormous explosion ripped through the night. We were thrown to the ground as a massive fireball rolled into the sky.

For a moment I just lay there, grateful just to be still and breathing. Finally I forced myself up on the elbow that wasn’t throbbing with pain, and then rolled onto my side. I looked back at the house, now completely engulfed in flames, and thought about how close I had come to dying — several times over — in that house that night. But the evil had died with the house and now maybe, just maybe, I could finally begin to heal.

Asher dropped to my side and threw his arms around my neck, sobbing into my shoulder. I wrapped my good arm around him, my injured arm cradled between us, and we rocked back and forth on the lawn. I watched the house burn over Asher’s shoulder. Every square inch of my body was in pain; God only knew how much worse it would get as the adrenaline wore off, but I was alive. And the boy I loved was alive, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.

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Christmas that year had a special significance; we were celebrating the gift of life with a new understanding. So much had happened in the last few months that when I look back it seems almost as if I had lived a whole lifetime in that short period. I know I felt as if I had. All of the survivors of the fire gathered on Christmas morning and had a special private time together. We had all been treated to lengthy stays at the local hospital, where we’d been treated for various cuts, bruises, and abra-sions, varying degrees of burns, one dislocated shoulder (mine), and smoke inhalation. Some of us required longer stays than others, with Judy and Dash having been the shortest. Jake was the last to be released, only having been discharged a few days before Christmas.

His arm was still in a sling and he had to go to rehab daily. He looked much older than he had before, but who could blame him after all he had been through?

His long hair was gone now, as was Judy’s. What hadn’t burned off had been chopped off at the hospital to make it easier to treat their cuts. Judy had gone back to her natural blonde, and for the first time I could see the family resemblance. I was amazed that I hadn’t seen it in Dash from the first.

So much information that had been hidden for years came out in the month after the fire that at times I felt like I was just waiting for Jerry Springer to call and say 282

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we were booked for the show. I was sure that if I was still confused and shocked, Jake’s poor head had to be absolutely spinning.

It had turned out that Judy was Dash’s mother. She’d become pregnant when she was very young and the father had promptly abandoned her. Her family had been scandalized and wanted her to have an abortion, but she’d refused and ran off to California, where she had the baby and raised him herself while working as a waitress and going to school at night.